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Getting Personal on Transgender Rights

The remarkable success of the same-sex marriage movement is owed in large part to the willingness of same-sex couples and their families to publicly share their personal stories.

That same approach of moving the discussion from abstract principles to the sympathetic stories of real people also promises to be a weapon in the building battle for transgender people’s rights.

The reason is people like Terri Cook, the mother of a transgender son from upstate New York, who spoke at the annual dinner Thursday night of the Empire State Pride Agenda.
Ms. Cook explained with matter-of-face eloquence that her son went from a hoppy child and straight-A student to a withdrawn, deeply depressed adolescent who, she said, “endured bullying and torment before we understood that his gender identity was the source of his pain.” He also attempted suicide.

“It was a long and difficult process,” she recounted. “There was bullying and rejection and discrimination along the way. We moved to another city, changed schools multiple times, and had to education countless people” about her son’s gender expression and identity. She included on that list her and her husband’s employers, school personnel and medical professionals.

Her story had a happy ending. She said her son is now “a happy and healthy college student” who is “living his life fully as the young man I now know he has always been.”

Ms. Cook is now working to get the New York State Legislature to approve long-stalled legislation to extend the state’s civil rights protections to transgender people.

She explained: “I no longer want to change my son so that society accepts him. I want to change society and our laws so that he (and all transgender people) can be seen for the remarkable and beautiful human beings that are.”